


Penetralia

by Binary_Sunset



Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Bittersweet, Homophobic Language, Jack Being an Asshole, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, One-Sided Attraction, au where no one was ever on the island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4941607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Binary_Sunset/pseuds/Binary_Sunset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pen-e-tra-li-a (plural noun)</p><p>	1.	The innermost part of a place or thing<br/>2.	The most private or secret things</p><p>(Or: Ralph gets to know the weird kid in town who buys sunflower seeds on Saturdays and disappears into the woods for hours on end)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I: A Place in Secret

**Author's Note:**

> I have put entirely too much effort into this.
> 
> Anyway, I wrote this instead of doing my homework. The alternate title was “Bittersweet 50’s Homos.”
> 
> Special thanks to tumblr user [ nightquills ](http://nightquills.tumblr.com/) for putting up with my craziness and my yelling about this goddamn book. You're the one true bae-ta!

Ralph had come to understand that Simon was a strange kid. A quiet kind of strange. While others seemed to instinctively avoid him, it was never for a reason Ralph could understand. Simon wasn’t particularly odd, in an outward way at least. His family went to church like everyone else, he went to the local school (unlike Ralph, who’d been in boarding school all year), and was, supposedly, a fairly good and well-behaved student, if a bit quiet. That being said, Simon always seemed to lag behind a bit when he was walking with his friends, the local church choir, who seemed to be making quite an effort to ignore him. Ralph knew just from the look of him that he was sickly. He'd occasionally be nursing a bloody nose as he walked around Lower Tadfield, usually alone. So, perhaps this was why the other choir boys seemed to be shutting him out.

Even more strange was that every Saturday, he'd walk into the general store during Ralph's shift, buy a bag of sunflower seeds, and leave. He'd hardly exchanged more than a few words with the kid other than the usual greeting Ralph gave to every customer.

It was Saturday again, and, as usual, Simon came in with the ring of the bell above the door and started looking around the store. As he made his way to the shelf where the seeds were normally located, he pursed his lips into a frown.

"I saved you some," Ralph announced.

Simon almost jumped with surprise at the other boy's voice. "What?"

"Sunflower seeds. You like the unsalted ones. I saved you some," he explained. He knelt down and took a bag from where he’d hid it behind the counter. "We ran out earlier this week, but I wanted to make sure you got some."

Simon fumbled his bony fingers through his pockets and produced a few coins. Exact change.

Ralph put them into the register and handed him the bag of seeds. "Why do you keep buying them?"

Simon inspected the bag being given to him as if it contained the answers to all his questions. "The seeds?"

"Yeah. And why do you buy them here, anyhow? Don't you live on the other side of town?"

"I like to feed them to the birds. Besides, your store's on the way." He put down the bag and started heading out.

"On the way to where?"

Simon turned his head in Ralph's direction. "Come meet me after church tomorrow and you can find out."

And with the ring of a bell, he seemed to vanish into the quiet streets of Lower Tadfield.

 

•••  
  


It was hard for Ralph to explain to his mother exactly what it was he was planning on doing with Simon, but as long as he promised not to leave town or damage his church clothes, she decided she was fine with it. He was 16, after all, with his own job, and he'd never had much of a penchant for troublemaking.

Once church let out, Ralph met with Simon in the churchyard. He was a few feet away from the other choir boys, having been stripped of his black robes and cap, despite the other boys still sporting them.

"What happened to your robes?" he asked.

"Fainted like a Victorian lady, that one!" Ralph heard one of the choir boys call. He was their chorister, a tall redhead with a face full of freckles.

"They figured I was overheated and made me take them off," Simon explained. "I didn't perform today."

"Are you... okay?" he asked, looking over Simon's body. He looked a bit more pale than usual.

He nodded. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Just needed to drink some water is all." Simon got up slowly, gripping Ralph’s shoulder and closing his eyes as he straightened.

"Dizzy?"

He snapped his eyes open. "I'm fine now. Let's go."

Pale, bony fingers found their grip on Ralph's hand as Simon lead him out of the church yard and into the woods. Ralph looked behind him, watching the other choir boys go about their activities as their parents milled about, not seeming to care about Simon's disappearance. Or his own, for that matter.

"What's the hurry?" Ralph asked.

"Sorry, I just wanted to get away from them," he admitted, still continuing through the woods with the same fervour. "And I wanted to have time to show you everything."

Ralph looked back, seeing the churchyard--along with the choir and their parents--slowly become obscured by trees. He found that he wasn’t afraid, to be away from the rest of society for a short while. Strangely, he was almost looking forward to wherever it was that Simon was taking him.

It was high noon and the forest was absolutely beautiful in the bright summer sunlight. It streamed through the leaves on the trees, painting the forest floor in a brilliant green hue. After a few minutes of walking, Simon's speed died down and his hand left Ralph's.

The two walked side by side until Simon stopped short.

Ralph looked around and almost gasped audibly. It was a small clearing where the forest had thinned out, dotted with rocks. The sunlight streamed down from overhead, little motes of pollen dancing in the visible rays. The whole clearing had a thick carpet of grass and moss dotted with brightly-coloured wildflowers. Simon, standing in the middle of it, looked almost comedically out of place in his tan slacks and white, collared dress shirt.

"Was it worth the walk?" he asked, gesturing to the clearing.

Ralph nodded curtly, trying to find his voice. "Y-yeah," he stuttered weakly.

Simon knelt down in front of the rocks. "Now watch this." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a half-empty bag of sunflower seeds. The same one as yesterday, Ralph figured. He opened it up and pulled out a handful of the small, tan shapes and placed it on the flat top of the rock.

They waited a moment, and Ralph was ready to ask what he was supposed to be seeing.

And then they came. Songbirds, wrens and finches and sparrows, came down a few at a time to have their fill of seed.

Ralph felt a smile creep across his face. "Simon, this is amazing!"

The thin boy beckoned Ralph over. "Come on, you can try spreading some seed out for them." He held out the bag of seed to Ralph.

Ralph crept through the clearing and accepted the offered bag. He placed another handful of seed on the rock. A small finch alighted beside him on the rock, pecking gleefully at the small seeds.

"How did you even find this place?" Ralph asked, after finally taking in the beauty of the forest around him.

Simon moved down to lie in the tall grass. He ran his thumb along the petal of one of the wild flowers, a little white daisy with a black centre. "I got caned at school and didn't want to get beaten at home as well. So I ran to the church and then into the woods until I found this place. Ended up staying here a while until I decided I should probably go home before they came looking for me."

Ralph laughed. "Simon, you're damn near an angel. What on Earth could you get caned for?"

Simon breathed out audibly. "It was nothing important."

He paused a moment. Why wouldn't Simon tell him what he did? Was it because of the punishment?

It was a small town. Most parents still gave their sons a rod or paddle as punishment, and even Ralph had managed to screw up badly enough to get it once or twice. Spare the rod, spoil the child.

But Simon was so weak. What would bring someone to hit him? "Did you break the law or something?"

Simon stared at Ralph, a shadow of sadness creeping through his features. "Ralph, please.” His voice was firm, yet still revealed a certain amount of softness.

"Seriously, did you steal something? Write somewhere you weren't supposed to?"

"Please, just drop it.” Although his tone his even, there was something about his expression that hinted at a deeper pain. There was a part of Ralph that wanted to shield him from whatever hurt him in this way. “What matters is, I found this place because of it."

Ralph looked at him incredulously. Why did Simon seem so cagey all of the sudden? "It doesn't matter what you did. I'm not gonna be mad or anything. I'm not your parents."

Simon shot up. "Ralph, I told you to stop!" There wasn't anger in his eyes, so much as sadness and frustration.

Still, this was the first time he'd ever heard Simon raise his voice and he decided he didn't want to hear it again. "Sorry."

The other boy laid back down into his bed of grass. "It's alright. Please just... don't bring it up again."

Ralph nodded. "Alright, I won't." But that certainly didn't mean he was going to keep quiet about it.

After a few minutes, Ralph reached into the bag again and put another handful of seed onto the rock, much to the delight of a flock of starlings that seemed to descend from nowhere.

Simon popped up almost immediately and started shooing the birds away.

Ralph looked at him incredulously. "What are you doing?"

"I don't like starlings. They take all the food and bully the little ones if they get close, so I try to shoo them away when I can."

It was almost pathetic, watching Simon try to get all those birds to go away. Ralph joined in on this principle alone, waving his arms wildly and shouting at the starlings to get them to take flight.

The whole process took a few minutes, but they were able to rid the rock of the starlings together.

Both boys looked at each other, smiling.

"That was actually pretty fun," Ralph said in between small bursts of laughter.

"You're welcome to come here whenever you'd like." Simon's voice wavered slightly. Somewhere beneath his confident stare, Ralph could sense that he was nervous for some reason.

This place was clearly very special to him, between the way the birds trusted him to keep the starlings away and how much he was willing to spend on food for them. The clearing just felt so private, like stepping into someone else's bedroom. This meant something to Simon, the whole thing. Despite the fact that he looked like any other boy, he seemed to just belong here.

Ralph, on the other hand, was just a visitor; this place wasn't his the way it was Simon's. Perhaps the other boy could sense this and was reluctant to give Ralph permission to access it.

"No, I couldn't take this place from you. Besides, I probably wouldn't be able to find my way here at all without you." Ralph laughed nervously.

"I brought you here so this place could be yours too. No one else knows how to find it. You wouldn't be taking anything from me, Ralph," Simon explained, "And on our way back, I could tell you how to get here."

"But you seemed--" Ralph stopped himself. Perhaps he wasn't supposed to pick up on Simon's reluctance. "Never mind." He cracked a smile. "I'd love to see more of what you love about this place."


	2. Part II: A Place for Secrets

 

It took Simon a few moments to catch his breath. Running through the woods had never been the best for his condition, especially not with Jack chasing him.  
  
He may have been playful enough around the other boys, but when the two were alone he'd keep using that goddamn word and making fun of him. Sometimes it was just too much for Simon to bear.  
  
Luckily, he knew Jack wouldn't follow him into the woods of his own volition. He had better things to do than chase Simon around Kingdom Come.  
  
His parents weren't expecting him home for another hour or two--perhaps he could spend some time in his grove.  
  
He knew the way like the back of his hand; he certainly knew it well enough to teach it to Ralph. It had served as a pretty good meeting place after church when he had a moment to sneak away from the rest of the choir boys.  
  
He hopped across a couple of rocks, thankful for some time to be away from everything, even for just an hour or two. He had no idea what he'd do once the school year started. The forest was on the other side of town, not to mention that Jack went to his school. Jack Merridew and his goddamn words.  
  
As he was dwelling on all of this, he stepped into his grove...  
  
...And his heart nearly stopped.  
  
Ralph was sitting on one of the rocks, looking like a force of nature in the rays of the setting sun. His arms were crossed, gazing at Simon with a small amount of disdain. "Jack told me what you did."  
  
Simon's stomach dropped. Of course it was Jack, of all people. No one else knew, except Simon's parents and the teacher who'd caught him.  
  
He'd never felt so trapped by the forest or his own body in his life. He could run, he knew, but he wouldn't get very far before passing out. Even just the run here had him almost completely winded. Instead he tried to get his sluggish mouth to try and form words. "What did he tell you?" It was barely audible between his overworked lungs and the fear that seemed to grip his throat and refuse to let go.  
  
"That you're a faggot--" There was that word again. Jack's favourite. "--and you kissed him behind the school a few years ago." He said it the same way he’d tell someone about the weather or a particularly uninteresting trip he’d taken.  
  
Simon backed up, away from Ralph. Despite his matter-of-fact tone, Simon didn't trust that he was taking it as well as he was letting on. "Are... Are you angry with me?"  
  
Ralph thought for a moment. "No, not really. Maybe a little bit, since you brought me to the forest alone. Were you planning on attacking me or something?"  
  
Simon shook his head. "Of course not." He'd learned his lesson the first time.  
  
He hadn't even liked Jack that much. He'd just been a naïve kid who thought nothing bad could happen if he stole his friend's first kiss. He knew Jack had a low opinion of him, due to his poor health and sickly appearance. Somehow, he had thought it might gain his approval.  
  
He'd grown up substantially that day, to say the least.  
  
All he'd wanted to do with Ralph was to be his friend. Maybe if he was lucky, Ralph would like him back.  
  
He'd been a fool to think that his past mistakes wouldn't catch up with him.  
  
And here they were, either chasing him into the woods or laid out in front of him, staring him down with Ralph’s bright blue eyes.  
  
"And at first, I was really mad at you."  
  
"For what?" he asked meekly.  
  
"For existing. For being something God hates. For leading me on like that."  
  
Simon backed up more, before colliding with a tree. "I didn't mean to--"  
  
Ralph got up. "I know. I get it. You didn't know how I'd react if I learned about..." He gestured to Simon. "This. But I figured something." He took a few steps closer. "If God hated you, why did He give you all this?"  
  
This wasn't a turn Simon was expecting.  
  
"If you hadn't kissed Jack, you never would've found this place, would you? That's something God would do. Make it so that you found this place when you needed it. And because you found this place, you also became friends with me. So, would God let that happen if He hated you?"  
  
Simon shook his head slowly, his vocal chords still refusing to work.  
  
"And if God doesn't mind you being a faggot--”

 

“Please don’t use that word.”

 

“--then why should I?"  
  
Simon slowly moved forward, back into the clearing. He never broke eye contact with Ralph, not knowing if he could find his voice, or even what to say if he did. At some point during the walk over his eyes started to water. And, at Ralph's feet, he knelt down and started sobbing.  
  
This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. This was some sick fantasy he'd made up and now, somehow he was hallucinating.  
  
"Simon? Simon!?"  
  
Hands were touching his shoulders, gently jostling his body to try and keep him awake.  
  
He could barely see through his tears. He wasn’t crying particularly violently--no sobs racked his frame or stilled his breathing--but his head was starting to spin frantically.  
  
It's not real. It's not real. It's not real, he kept reminding himself.  
  
"Simon, are you gonna faint? Talk to me!" The voice was Ralph's.  
  
And it was right. He was probably going to pass out.

 

•••

  
He woke up in his favourite spot in the grass, staring up at the sky. The sun was still setting, so he couldn't have been out for long. There was a dull throbbing in his head, a remnant of the faintness he’d felt before. He’d had these headaches before. They were a bit scary at first, but hardly ever amounted to anything substantial.  
  
He rose to his feet slowly, the whole forest seeming to spin as he got to his feet.  
  
Strong hands gripped his shoulders. "Easy, Simon, you just woke up."  
  
He didn't even have to look to know it was Ralph. That was definitely his voice. It was more subdued than before, but it was still undeniably Ralph's.  
  
"Ralph." Simon tried to find his voice. "Did that really just happen?"  
  
"Oh, you mean the..." He paused, as if trying to figure out how to phrase it. "The thing with Jack?"  
  
Simon nodded, causing the clearing to spin more vigorously. He gently placed his fingers to his temples and breathed deeply, trying to ground himself.  
  
Ralph removed his hands from his shoulders and looked the other boy in the eye, now that they were on the same level. Ralph was so much taller than him, despite being a couple months younger. Though, he supposed, that was what happened when you were ill for most of your childhood.  
  
Simon closed his eyes, to stop the clearing from spinning. "Are you.. like me, then?"  
  
"I dunno about labels or anything, but I'd like to be friends with you."  
  
He breathed out as the motion in his head slowed. "Just friends?"  
  
A gentle hand ran through Simon's dark hair. "We'll start off like that and then see how it goes."  
  
Simon didn't even have to open his eyes to know Ralph was smiling.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like this, feel free to yell with me about Lord of the Flies on my [ tumblr ](aro-ackermans.tumblr.com/) . Or at me. Whichever.


End file.
